5 ms·

Shrink thinking: are countries really like people?

41 points by Thevet 7y ago

cjfd 7y ago
C.G. Jung once wrote that it was totally clear that the amount of conscience of a group of people is inversely proportional to the size of the group. So, if countries are like people they mostly are like psychopaths.
- Merrill 7y ago
  The IQ of a group size N is approximately 100/logN for N>10. For the US Senate, N=100 and IQ = 50.
  - dTal 7y ago
    So the IQ of America is 12. Do you have any rules for nested groups?
    - Merrill 7y ago
      No, but nested groups are the common organization of governments and corporations. The House of Representatives (IQ=38), for example, does little other than vote in session, while all of the actual work is done by committees. A nested model may be difficult because at N=10 or less, the IQ depends a lot on the selection of the individuals and their fit with the tasks to be undertaken. A nested governmental organization would be a good idea, and that is my impression of how the US worked early in its history. The voters would elect town officials who would elect county officials who would elect state legislators and at least in the case of the Senate, the state legislators would elect US Senators. Ideally the electors at each level would be able to assess the abilities and character of candidates and the cream would rise to the top. This is sort of how the two political parties still work, although the modern methods of getting elected and penchant for direct democracy enable candidates to run for offices without working their way up the party, e.g. Bloomberg.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      And yet America (assuming the colloquial 'America' that means 'The US') developed the atomic bomb and put a man on the moon. Could any single individual or small group of individuals have accomplished this? I doubt it. It takes a nation worth of resources and organization to pull these things off.
  - StacyRoberts 7y ago
    Would a group of ten people with an iq each of 40 get smarter? That kind of math led to the greatest financial collapse in world history.
- dTal 7y ago
  If it's possible to mathematically characterize the relationship, and the relationship is non-linear, then there exists an optimal hierarchical grouping algorithm for maximizing empathy in nested groups (that balances the loss due to group numbers vs the "generation loss" from traversing hierarchical levels. I think the difference in sizes between the organizational groups of different countries goes a long way towards explaining the vast differences in political flavor. How many people are in the smallest political constituency you identify with? Dozens? Hundreds? Millions? This is the range of scales we're dealing with. What would it look like if we layered government so that at no level was any group larger than tribal size (~150)? In the US you'd only need 4 levels to cover the entire population, roughly corresponding to: neighborhood (150 people), town (~20,000 people), city/state (3-4 million people), country (327 million people). At that scale, each representative can be on friendly personal terms with a) everyone in the constituency they represent and b) every other representative at their level. So the access to government ought to be much better with this system. In the US, local and federal governments are divided - there's not a lot of continuity between the town government and your friendly local congressperson.
  - crawfordcomeaux 7y ago
    My friends/partner and I are designing neighborhood models to go along with these ideas with the goal of experimenting with them on land we give back to native tribes. I'd love to talk to you more about this if you're interested. My contact info is in my profile, if so.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    I suspect that it would lead to massive corruption if actually tried both in personal enrichment and NIMBYism for everything related to "being the one to bell the cat". Localism is fashionable but I can't help but suspect it will only make things worse judging by every dysfunctional small town and city council working on ineffectual grand proclimations and unconstitutional ordinances instead of actual responsibilities like potholes. Related the disturbing root of the problem has been historically been not just the leadership that is objectively terrible and accepts bad outcomes for the sake of hurting the other but that frankly the people and the values they hold dear. Storm Thurgood even admitted that he tried running on things which would actually help them and got no real interest but running on racism propelled him forward.
- vlehto 7y ago
  That would be the exactly same conclusion Machiavelli made. And I'm not trying to mock anybody here. Machiavelli was very smart dude.
Udik 7y ago
I have very little doubt that countries are like their own people. If anything, for the simple fact that democratic governments are the expression of the people's predilections, fears, shortcomings and traditions. When an emotional undercurrent or specific attitude is present in a population- be it the result of current events or of a longstanding cultural heritage, then it will reflect at state level. Thinking of interpreting history as the result of external conditions and the choices of few people in power is like trying to interpret the behaviour of a person as the combination of external events and individual neurons firing.
- smitty1e 7y ago
  To oversimplify, think of a human population as an information system, and ask - where is the state kept, and - where is the state mutated? There is some state kept in objects like books and buildings and databases. But the individual human brains are the greatness/shame of the nation. There is a cognitive crutch "The American People" that is frequently leaned on, but the large the population symbolically aggregated for the assertion, the less meaningful it seems. Hence my disagreement when someone says: > I have very little doubt that countries are like their own people. It gets really hard to make any point stick at scale.
  - Merrill 7y ago
    A common phrase of politicians and commentators objecting to some policy with which they disagree is "That is not who we are as a people!" Unless backed up with really good polling data, the phrase is total nonsense.
    - smitty1e 7y ago
      I'm attacking "as a people". It's a flag indicating: "hogwash".
  - Udik 7y ago
    I think you might be overlooking the depth of cultural attitudes and the size of cultural differences between populations. From the stuff you're taught in school, to what you learn in the family, to common sayings, to the shape of your cities: everything contributes in building a slightly different worldview and different ways of reacting to events and changes. On the other hand, when politicians say "the people want it" it's almost always bs. What they mean is that, in the best case, they have a slight absolute majority- but often only a relative one. But that doesn't really count much- the issues they talk about are already within the frame of what is culturally possible in that country. Trump was elected with less than 50% of the votes, so he doesn't represent "the people"; however, he would have struggled to get 5% in Germany- so in some sense electing Trump does represent "the American people"- about as much as Hillary Clinton does.
Merrill 7y ago
Ascribing personhood to countries is weirder than ascribing personhood to corporations. Particularly grating is the common parlance that countries X and Y are "friends" or "enemies". This may have made sense in the world of monarchical empires, but in modern nations it is at best a rough summary of the collective attitude of an elite. The bulk of the population in each country is unlikely to care at all about the other. And there is likely to be a significant dissent about whether friend or enemy should characterize the relationship.
- telesilla 7y ago
  Thank you! This is a serious issue I come across often. I'm often the token outsider when traveling which leads people to being open about their prejudices, most often to their neighbouring countries, how the is mutual dislike. Almost always this is an idea evolved some some hundreds of years ago, and no longer holds any truth. Even when conflict is more recent its remarkable how easily a civilian of one county will blame the civilians of another, not taking geo-politics into account in any way.
  - bromuro 7y ago
    Same here! I thought nobody was understanding this.
- andrewflnr 7y ago
  Similarly, a single neuron in your brain has no particular feelings toward neurons in your friend's brain.
- blowski 7y ago
  It's a model used to simplify the world around us and, as with all models, it's wrong but useful. When you over-apply the model, it stops being useful.
  - everdev 7y ago
    How useful is it really? I think it only serves to conflate the will of the people with the will of the elite. I certainly don't want to be associated with everything the US has done in my lifetime. Is it really that much harder to name the person who proposed the policy or who ordered the action?
osullivj 7y ago
Surprised to see Ferguson assert that the UK is more than 400 years old. The UK came into being in 1801, as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It's predecessor was the Kingdom of Great Britain, itself created in 1707 with the Act of Union between England and Scotland.
- JetSetWilly 7y ago
  He's probably equating the union of the crowns with the creation of the UK. His political views are well known to be very passionately unionist and critical of Scottish nationalism so he's motivated to overstate the historical reach and influence of the UK as much as possible.
  - jariel 7y ago
    Not very just, and his biases are not needed for him to make this case. The UK is a specific 'legal status', one could easily argue that the nation predates it's own legal status, particularly given the deep relationship between Scotland and England having literally shared monarchs, co-ownership of vast tracts of land, integrated nobility etc.. In terms of applying 'personal character' I think it's pretty reasonable actually.
friendlybus 7y ago
Personhood includes identity, character and personality. Ascribing most of a countries' personhood to a personality and a therapeutic perspective does not eliminate the character and identity the greater story of a nation instills in it's populace and they grow to inhabit. There are more lines you could draw against the title, but the content of the article is so narrow I don't know which would be the most productive to add. The culture and character of a nation is a useful guide stone for the beginning of any expectations one could have interacting with said country.

41 points by Thevet 7y ago

cjfd 7y ago

C.G. Jung once wrote that it was totally clear that the amount of conscience of a group of people is inversely proportional to the size of the group. So, if countries are like people they mostly are like psychopaths.

Merrill 7y ago
The IQ of a group size N is approximately 100/logN for N>10. For the US Senate, N=100 and IQ = 50.
- dTal 7y ago
  So the IQ of America is 12. Do you have any rules for nested groups?
  - Merrill 7y ago
    No, but nested groups are the common organization of governments and corporations. The House of Representatives (IQ=38), for example, does little other than vote in session, while all of the actual work is done by committees. A nested model may be difficult because at N=10 or less, the IQ depends a lot on the selection of the individuals and their fit with the tasks to be undertaken. A nested governmental organization would be a good idea, and that is my impression of how the US worked early in its history. The voters would elect town officials who would elect county officials who would elect state legislators and at least in the case of the Senate, the state legislators would elect US Senators. Ideally the electors at each level would be able to assess the abilities and character of candidates and the cream would rise to the top. This is sort of how the two political parties still work, although the modern methods of getting elected and penchant for direct democracy enable candidates to run for offices without working their way up the party, e.g. Bloomberg.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    And yet America (assuming the colloquial 'America' that means 'The US') developed the atomic bomb and put a man on the moon. Could any single individual or small group of individuals have accomplished this? I doubt it. It takes a nation worth of resources and organization to pull these things off.
- StacyRoberts 7y ago
  Would a group of ten people with an iq each of 40 get smarter? That kind of math led to the greatest financial collapse in world history.
dTal 7y ago
If it's possible to mathematically characterize the relationship, and the relationship is non-linear, then there exists an optimal hierarchical grouping algorithm for maximizing empathy in nested groups (that balances the loss due to group numbers vs the "generation loss" from traversing hierarchical levels. I think the difference in sizes between the organizational groups of different countries goes a long way towards explaining the vast differences in political flavor. How many people are in the smallest political constituency you identify with? Dozens? Hundreds? Millions? This is the range of scales we're dealing with. What would it look like if we layered government so that at no level was any group larger than tribal size (~150)? In the US you'd only need 4 levels to cover the entire population, roughly corresponding to: neighborhood (150 people), town (~20,000 people), city/state (3-4 million people), country (327 million people). At that scale, each representative can be on friendly personal terms with a) everyone in the constituency they represent and b) every other representative at their level. So the access to government ought to be much better with this system. In the US, local and federal governments are divided - there's not a lot of continuity between the town government and your friendly local congressperson.
- crawfordcomeaux 7y ago
  My friends/partner and I are designing neighborhood models to go along with these ideas with the goal of experimenting with them on land we give back to native tribes. I'd love to talk to you more about this if you're interested. My contact info is in my profile, if so.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  I suspect that it would lead to massive corruption if actually tried both in personal enrichment and NIMBYism for everything related to "being the one to bell the cat". Localism is fashionable but I can't help but suspect it will only make things worse judging by every dysfunctional small town and city council working on ineffectual grand proclimations and unconstitutional ordinances instead of actual responsibilities like potholes. Related the disturbing root of the problem has been historically been not just the leadership that is objectively terrible and accepts bad outcomes for the sake of hurting the other but that frankly the people and the values they hold dear. Storm Thurgood even admitted that he tried running on things which would actually help them and got no real interest but running on racism propelled him forward.
vlehto 7y ago
That would be the exactly same conclusion Machiavelli made. And I'm not trying to mock anybody here. Machiavelli was very smart dude.

Udik 7y ago

I have very little doubt that countries are like their own people. If anything, for the simple fact that democratic governments are the expression of the people's predilections, fears, shortcomings and traditions. When an emotional undercurrent or specific attitude is present in a population- be it the result of current events or of a longstanding cultural heritage, then it will reflect at state level. Thinking of interpreting history as the result of external conditions and the choices of few people in power is like trying to interpret the behaviour of a person as the combination of external events and individual neurons firing.

smitty1e 7y ago
To oversimplify, think of a human population as an information system, and ask - where is the state kept, and - where is the state mutated? There is some state kept in objects like books and buildings and databases. But the individual human brains are the greatness/shame of the nation. There is a cognitive crutch "The American People" that is frequently leaned on, but the large the population symbolically aggregated for the assertion, the less meaningful it seems. Hence my disagreement when someone says: > I have very little doubt that countries are like their own people. It gets really hard to make any point stick at scale.
- Merrill 7y ago
  A common phrase of politicians and commentators objecting to some policy with which they disagree is "That is not who we are as a people!" Unless backed up with really good polling data, the phrase is total nonsense.
  - smitty1e 7y ago
    I'm attacking "as a people". It's a flag indicating: "hogwash".
- Udik 7y ago
  I think you might be overlooking the depth of cultural attitudes and the size of cultural differences between populations. From the stuff you're taught in school, to what you learn in the family, to common sayings, to the shape of your cities: everything contributes in building a slightly different worldview and different ways of reacting to events and changes. On the other hand, when politicians say "the people want it" it's almost always bs. What they mean is that, in the best case, they have a slight absolute majority- but often only a relative one. But that doesn't really count much- the issues they talk about are already within the frame of what is culturally possible in that country. Trump was elected with less than 50% of the votes, so he doesn't represent "the people"; however, he would have struggled to get 5% in Germany- so in some sense electing Trump does represent "the American people"- about as much as Hillary Clinton does.

Merrill 7y ago

Ascribing personhood to countries is weirder than ascribing personhood to corporations. Particularly grating is the common parlance that countries X and Y are "friends" or "enemies". This may have made sense in the world of monarchical empires, but in modern nations it is at best a rough summary of the collective attitude of an elite. The bulk of the population in each country is unlikely to care at all about the other. And there is likely to be a significant dissent about whether friend or enemy should characterize the relationship.

telesilla 7y ago
Thank you! This is a serious issue I come across often. I'm often the token outsider when traveling which leads people to being open about their prejudices, most often to their neighbouring countries, how the is mutual dislike. Almost always this is an idea evolved some some hundreds of years ago, and no longer holds any truth. Even when conflict is more recent its remarkable how easily a civilian of one county will blame the civilians of another, not taking geo-politics into account in any way.
- bromuro 7y ago
  Same here! I thought nobody was understanding this.
andrewflnr 7y ago
Similarly, a single neuron in your brain has no particular feelings toward neurons in your friend's brain.
blowski 7y ago
It's a model used to simplify the world around us and, as with all models, it's wrong but useful. When you over-apply the model, it stops being useful.
- everdev 7y ago
  How useful is it really? I think it only serves to conflate the will of the people with the will of the elite. I certainly don't want to be associated with everything the US has done in my lifetime. Is it really that much harder to name the person who proposed the policy or who ordered the action?

osullivj 7y ago

Surprised to see Ferguson assert that the UK is more than 400 years old. The UK came into being in 1801, as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It's predecessor was the Kingdom of Great Britain, itself created in 1707 with the Act of Union between England and Scotland.

JetSetWilly 7y ago
He's probably equating the union of the crowns with the creation of the UK. His political views are well known to be very passionately unionist and critical of Scottish nationalism so he's motivated to overstate the historical reach and influence of the UK as much as possible.
- jariel 7y ago
  Not very just, and his biases are not needed for him to make this case. The UK is a specific 'legal status', one could easily argue that the nation predates it's own legal status, particularly given the deep relationship between Scotland and England having literally shared monarchs, co-ownership of vast tracts of land, integrated nobility etc.. In terms of applying 'personal character' I think it's pretty reasonable actually.

friendlybus 7y ago

Personhood includes identity, character and personality. Ascribing most of a countries' personhood to a personality and a therapeutic perspective does not eliminate the character and identity the greater story of a nation instills in it's populace and they grow to inhabit. There are more lines you could draw against the title, but the content of the article is so narrow I don't know which would be the most productive to add. The culture and character of a nation is a useful guide stone for the beginning of any expectations one could have interacting with said country.